The Key System Workers’ Coalition for Justice and Labor Rights went to the KSS general manager’s office in Valle Hermoso on Monday, January 28th to negotiate their petitions. The secretary’s manager told the workers that Mr. Servando Salazar, the general manager, was busy; they went again later and she informed them that he was “at lunch” and finally she said, “Sorry, he’s gone.”

On Tuesday, January 29th the negotiating committee of the Workers’ Coalition for Justice and Labor Rights went again to the general manager’s office, but this time they told the secretary: “Here are our petitions. Give this copy to the manager, and if Servando Salazar does not want to negotiate with us, then we will ask our allies who live in Detroit, Michigan to form a committee and go and negotiate at Key Systems’ headquarters in Sterling Heights, Michigan on our behalf.”

The general manager, instead of heaving a meeting to negotiate with the workers, called the CTM union that functions to protect  the company, and by the afternoon the union delegate who had never before appeared at the plant arrived at the company. She had a meeting with workers from one of the assembly lines, and told them that they already have a union leader, and that this new leader would come the next day to talk with them. The workers confronted her, questioning who elected the new leader and if they’d ever had a union election. The union delegate became nervous and called off the meeting.

At the end of the shift, the Workers’ Coalition organized their co-workers by conducting a meeting in the Key Safety Systems parking lot and giving flyers to the workers in the other plants, calling on them to join the Workers’ Coalition.   

On Wednesday, January 30th, Servando Salazar again refused to meet with the Workers’ Coalition. The workers began distributing the letter with the points for negotiation to all fellow workers. The quality control workers ran thousands of photocopies of the letter and gave them to the workers at the plants. Suddenly, a man whom nobody knew and nobody had seen before appeared at the plant and informed the workers’ committee that he was the union representative, and that they had a new leader named Teresa Gonzalez. He told the workers that her designation was legal because she was the technical secretary when the union’s Secretary General passed away. According to him, union elections are every three years and they would have to wait three years to have a union election.

The workers committee confronted him, telling him that they didn’t know him, and questioned who he was if they had never seen him before.  The workers also said that they didn’t know Teresa Gonzalez either and that they had never heard anything about her. Therefore, they told the man that union elections would be when workers called for them and not when people that nobody knows want to take them over.

The unknown man told workers the union would have a meeting on Friday at five to inform them about the new leader. Workers yelled at him, telling him that they wanted union elections.

After work, the workers met again in the parking lot, and a police patrol arrived and began harassing them and interrogating them: Who were they, what were they doing, what were they meeting about, and what were those papers? They said the company had called them and complained that there were foreign people in the company parking lot agitating the workers. The workers said, “We are from Valle Hermoso and we work at KSS, and we are giving flyers to our fellow workers to defend our rights. Is that a crime?”
 
The workers are mobilizing in the field, and CJM members and allies from Detroit, Michigan are getting ready to organize a delegation to Sterling Heights to meet with the headquarters CEO of Key Safety Systems.

Support the Key Safety Systems workers’ struggle by sending letters to KSS headquarters demanding that the general manager of Valle Hermoso, Servando Salazar, meet with the Workers’ Coalition for Justice and Labor Rights and negotiate the working conditions and salaries in the plants in Valle Hermoso, Mexico.